Whiskey and November
by orangeflavor
Summary: "'It's the end times, Jack,' she whispers breathlessly through the raging hail of gunfire and explosions around them. Just below in the valley lies their death, or their freedom. 'You ready'" - On the frontlines of London, Jack and Miranda contemplate the end of things. A not-quite-love story in three parts.
1. Welcome to the Shit

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: This piece was originally for a writing challenge that I, unfortunately, was not able to continue in. But I wanted to post it anyway because I'm particularly proud of it.

Whiskey and November

Chapter One: Welcome to the Shit

" _Every bruise and quake in her bones makes her fierce, makes her ruthless, makes her deadly. Every ache and sore muscle makes her certain. Certain she still lives."_ \- On the frontlines of London, Jack and Miranda contemplate the end of things. A not-quite-love story in three parts.

It is far quieter than it should be.

There is only the faint tremble of her breath, heavy and labored, scraping her lungs as it leaves her. The ever-present tingling of biotics that lights along her skin, that low-pitch hum that is familiar and comforting. Always promising of power. Always thrumming her freedom. Soft and barely-there and anchoring.

Jack curls her fingers into fists and feels the rough material of her gloves against her palms. Her whole body is lined with sweat beneath the light weight of her body armor, the deep green of her chestplate glinting black in the night. Behind her, the heavy, ragged bodies of her biotic students slump against the debris as they try to rein in their breathing, their eyes hazy with exhaustion, their mouths dry and calves aching. Her 'Biotic Barrage' as she affectionately calls them. London is burning and broken all around them. She can hear the hoarse shout of orders from the Alliance commander several feet away, rallying his troops stationed around the temporary forward camp. She knows they have only minutes before they are on the move again.

"Alright, you bed-wetters," she barks, tearing her gaze from the dark London skyline and facing her former students. She plants her hands on her hips. "Gather your gear. We move in five."

There is the collective groan of her squad, but it tells of weariness and fatigue rather than disregard. Slowly, they get to their feet, swapping heat sinks and medi-gel packs. Jack reloads her own shotgun, strapping it securely behind her.

The Alliance officer she had eyed along the camp makes his way toward her. "Jack?" he questions, his assault rifle held leisurely in his hands, his voice muffled only slightly by his breather helmet.

She crosses her arms and leans her weight to one leg. "One and only," she smirks.

The officer rolls his neck at the strain in his muscles. "Lieutenant Darrow. Just got orders from Admiral Anderson. Your squad's with us for the last push. Welcome to November Company."

She lifts her chin in quick acknowledgement. "Got it. What's the plan?"

"We're effectively part of Hammer Squad, leading the heavy artillery on a path to that Destroyer guarding the beam." He motions toward the distant shaft of light blazing up from the crumbling London horizon. "We're to rendezvous with Whiskey Company at the next FOB. I'll send you the coordinates." He pauses, glancing over her squad of barely legal biotic teenagers. She can feel his frown more than see it behind his breather mask. "Your kids going to be up for it?" There is the hint of disbelief lingering behind the concern.

A dark smirk makes its way across Jack's face. "Don't let the pimples fool you. My guys can tear a biotic hole the size of Harbinger's nutsack in a Reaper line."

Darrow turns his gaze back to Jack and his chuckle is warm and unexpected. The air vibrates around them as three Alliance fighters speed through the air above the camp, their thunderous flight drowning out all other sounds for several seconds. Darrow looks up into the sky to watch the faint trail of smoke along the ozone.

Jack finds something familiar and welcome about him, something reassuring she cannot place. In the way he stands. The way he cradles his weapon in his hand. The way his armor tells of heavy use and close calls.

Darrow brings his attention back to Jack before him and hefts his rifle up to rest on his shoulder. "I think we can work with that," he chuckles. He sobers quickly. "We'll be taking the west support of Hammer Squad, clearing the buildings there to get the auxiliary unit room to maneuver. Set your frequency to 6-2-kilo-8."

Uncrossing her arms, Jack nods and taps the necessary keys along her omni-tool, hearing the quick buzz and static in the comm. link in her ear before the line goes steady.

Darrow cocks his head as he watches her a moment. "Commander Shepard's leading the charge of the central column."

Jack scoffs and shakes her head, her arm lowering as the light of her omni-tool rescinds. "What a glory whore."

Darrow eyes her momentarily. "I hear you were Normandy crew once."

Jack rolls her eyes, swiping her hand across her nose. "Yeah, I got out of that shit quick. Too much 'kumbaya' for my taste."

Darrow nods. "Well, you're in the right place then. Welcome to the shit."

Jack glances back over her tired students, some leaning over with hands on their knees. Others holding shaking hands to their rifles, their fingers tight and stiff against the barrels. A few bravely taking point, directing the lower-ranking members of the squad.

Some have faces as blank as her past.

Something sinks inside her then, sharp and fast and branding like regret.

"Yeah," she croaks, her eyes drifting to the dark, unreachable horizon. It will be the last for some of them. "Welcome to the shit," she whispers.

* * *

Everywhere people are dying.

Jack punches another hole in the line of Cannibals advancing on November Company. The Shockwave blast sends bits of concrete and mutilated flesh flying all around them. The detonation of a Ravager's gun blows cleanly through the crumbling cover of concrete shielding two Marines on her right. They are blasted back, their screams drenched in blood, one's leg blown clean off. Jack can see the gaping hole in the other's stomach as they slam into the wall behind them. She grits her teeth and shouts down the line. "Latner! O'dair! Barriers, now! Shaw and Johnson, cover fire."

Two students, eyes dark and frightful, mouths set tight in rigid frowns, nod and peek out of their cover, one raining a hail of bullets down on the incoming Cannibals and Marauders, the other shooting off biotic projectiles. Meanwhile, two other students brace themselves, and then sprint under the cover of their comrades' fire to the left side of the crumbling building. Jack's shotgun lets a round off at the Ravager to distract it, her Shockwaves plummeting through the Reaper line. The two sprinting students slide behind a concrete barrier once they make it across the room. They don't hesitate. Their biotic barriers are thrown up instantly, the blue wall of power slowly emanating wider to encompass the doorway just behind them, the entrance to the large, semi-blown out building they were fighting in.

"Darrow," Jack calls, a finger tapping the comm. link in her ear, "Send them in! Barriers are up!"

A sharp crack echoes after her shout and Jack looks up to find the Ravager ahead exploding in dark, putrid slush, and then collapsing to the dirt. She twists her gaze up and behind her to find Darrow laid out on the third floor landing, his sniper rifle trained on the Reaper line. He charges the release and cocks the barrel back. "Roger that. Second line, go, go, go!"

A wave of Marines floods in under the students' barriers and Marauders are dropping left and right. Jack's smile is splashed with blood and wickedness. Her body thrums with excitement. She feels her muscles aching, feels the heavy pull in her chest with every labored breath. Her calves are tight and trembling, the subtle twinge in her stomach threatening to overflow to a painful cramp if she does not rest soon. She can feel the steady vibration of her implant at the base of her skull, rippling with biotic power. It shouldn't be straining so much. Jack swallows thickly and ignores it. "Barragers, advance!" Her voice rips from her throat with a heat and a fervor she has missed.

Something howls in the distance and she grinds her teeth harshly, her lip curling in disgust.

Banshees.

Her hands ache for blood that will not wash.

She jumps the concrete barrier and roars her fury at the nearest Marauder, her fist soaring through the air, body flushed in brilliant blue, power emanating from every pore. Her fist connects harshly with the creature's jaw, and there is a second's delay before the biotic force explodes from her fist and the Marauder's head is blasted away in a rippling wave of destructive energy. Jack's cheeks are splashed with warm blood, her fist slick and covered in the stuff. She licks her lips and tastes the sharp, corrupted tang of the beast.

Her teeth flash in the light of her flaring biotics and she is moving once more, her whole body enflamed in blue. She is a devastating, burning supernova. Coursing through the dark night in a brilliant flash. Beautiful destruction. Light and force and movement. Radiant and momentary.

And then gone.

* * *

The heavy, rumbling _boom_ of an explosion farther up the trench echoes in her bones. The ground shakes around her and she ducks lower in her crouched position behind the debris of a blown out wall. Her breath is loud in her ears, her whole body aching. A curse leaves her lips as she checks her remaining packs of medi-gel along her belt.

Prangley shuffles up beside her, his arms over his head. Gunfire sounds all around them. He drops beside her unceremoniously, his chest heaving wildly with fearful breathes. "Ma'am," he barely gets out in a ragged groan, one hand moving to the ache of a bruised rib.

Jack whips her head to him, her teeth bared. "What, Prangley?" It is harsher than she means. But she thinks maybe it should be.

He pants in pain and exhaustion. "I don't know if we'll make the next hill. The others are wearing."

Jack glances behind him and sees the remainder of her biotic class slumped behind cover. It is a far smaller number then it should be. She huffs, frustration blooming tight in her bones, her skin trembling in rage and desperate need.

A Banshee howls in the distance and she watches the wide eyes and trembling mouths of her students. She sends a fist into the dirt beside her, her eyes flashing back to Prangley. "Do you understand what we're doing out here, you little shit?"

He is taken aback by her brusque tone momentarily. It has been long months since she has lashed out in such a way to him. He blinks at her silently.

She stretches an arm out and points east, past the crumbling buildings and into the dark, bloody night. "Shepard's out there. He's about to send those Reaper fuckers back to the hell they came from and _we're_ going to help him do it. Over that next hill is Whiskey Company. That's our rendezvous. We make it. No matter what."

Prangley swallows. "But…"

"But _nothing_ , Prangley," she breathes harshly, a hand coming up to grab him by the collar. Her fist is trembling and forceful in his uniform, his quiet yelp of surprise drowned out by a fairly close explosion. "We've got a job to do. We clear the path for Shepard and we keep our soldiers alive. There's no room for failure. You want to see home again, Prangley? Then you fucking well better keep advancing." She releases her hold of him and he falls back against the concrete wall of cover. Jack grinds her teeth and peeks around the debris, trying to find Lieutenant Darrow's position. "We _will_ make that hill. Are we clear?"

Prangley looks back to the other members of their biotic support squad. These are faces he's laughed with, ached with, bled with. The way things are looking, these are faces he'll be dying with.

Jack puts a hand to the comm. link in her ear. "Darrow! Do you hear me? Lieutenant! Fuck," she curses when she gets nothing on the line. She hears the steady thrum of gunfire across the fallen building beside them, on the other side of where her squad lays in cover. Darrow's unit was headed that way before the roof collapsed on them and their two squads were separated. Jack and her Biotic Barrage had cleared out the Cannibals and Marauders flooding in through the nearest hole in the building, once they shook the confusion and surprise from their minds after the roof collapse.

Now, Jack glances around the cover once more to make sure the space of the empty and ruined room is clear of Reaper forces. She clenches her jaw at the sight of a new wave of Marauders coming in over the wreckage. She grips her shotgun comfortingly in her palms, and feels the subtle flare of her biotics that floods her mind just before she lashes out.

It feels right. It feels needed and intimate and _right_. Everything about war and blood feels right to her. Feels inevitable. Feels reassuring in the way that bones crack and skin tears and cries rip from throats. These are welcome signs. These are things that tell her she still lives. Still breathes. Still feels the blood threading through her veins.

Every bruise and quake in her bones makes her fierce, makes her ruthless, makes her deadly.

Every ache and sore muscle makes her certain.

Certain she still lives.

Jack pulls a deep breath in and feels the biotic power flood her system like a narcotic. Her smile spreads across her lips without her even realizing.

She is eager.

Eager to prove she's still here. Still fighting.

She opens her palm to channel her power into a focused singular blast, her whole body shimmering in brilliant blue. The light is blinding.

She's not ready for that endless night. Not ready for stillness and quiet and cold.

Not dead yet.

* * *

"Rodriguez! Shore up that Barrier!" Jack's hoarse yell is drowned out by a hail of gunfire. They are running over debris and through hollowed out buildings, some students projecting biotic Barriers over the first line of marines, others rounding off projectiles from behind the line. Still others are firing into the Reaper forces, their implants throbbing and flaring, their biotics waning quickly. Jack heads the front of Darrow's unit as they push against the two Ravagers blocking their path through the last building until the rendezvous location. The two corrupted creatures explode in unison, the bright red flare of a marine's grenade and the simultaneous blue of Jack's explosive biotics blinding to them. They move quickly, jumping over the concrete barriers and steel planes of damaged, fallen walls.

Just a little more.

Jack raises her arm to fire a Shockwave into the last group of Cannibals in the room, her power charging up, pulling at her waning strength, flooding down her arm. She sees the Marauder come around the nearby corner too late. No time for a Barrier. Her eyes wide, arm swinging toward it to release her Shockwave, the other raising her shotgun simultaneously, Jack hauls left as she lets off her biotic projectile and unloads her shotgun, hoping to tumble behind a burned out shelving unit.

She cries out in pain as a bullet rips into her shoulder, just between the pads of her shoulder guard, another biting through her shields and lodging in the armor covering her ribs, the force of it blowing her back as she tumbles behind the shelves. "Fuck!" she yells, her voice ripping from her as she pushes herself to all fours and then falls back against the shelf. She grits her teeth at the searing pain in her shoulder, one hand reaching up to hold tightly to her wound as she tries to breathe again, the heavy bruise of the shot she almost took to her stomach aching all the way through to her lungs. "Fucking – fuck, FUCK!" She slams a fist back into the shelf and pants, blinking away the slow inking blackness. She peeks around the edge of the shelf and finds the Marauder laid out, unmoving, several feet away in the dirt, a shotgun blast through its stomach, its limbs twisted in sharp, unnatural angles from the Shockwave.

There are three Marines on her left, firing out from behind a similar shelving unit. One gets a bullet to the calf and falls to his knee out of cover, before his face gets blown off by a Cannibal's rifle. Jack grits her teeth at the sight, straining her gaze around the men to try and find her students. She can see seven of them huddled farther back from her position, behind some desks and fallen cabinets, unable to advance with the flood of Cannibals firing on them. The empty center of the room holds no cover and they can't make a run for it until more Reaper forces are taken out.

The fighting continues around her. She can't even see all of her students. She calls to Darrow through the comm. link and still gets nothing. Suddenly, there is a thunderous blast to her left and she looks to find a Brute having thrown out the wall of the dilapidated room leading into the alley. She hears a scream and blinks as she recognizes one of her students, Laura Shaw, in the grip of the Brute, its claws wrapped around her head, just before it slams her down into the cement before Jack can even move, the girl's body flailing and weightless and then splattered across the ground. The Brute continues on into the room, not even noticing as it walks over the young girl's blood-strewn, broken body.

Jack holds back a choking roar of rage. She blinks through the fury, tries to pull in deep breathes but her chest is aching and tight, her lungs dragging air through her pipes in a fierce, needful pull. Her head is swimming, vision splotchy with intermittent blackness. Her whole stomach is sore, muscle spasms rippling through her. Her shoulder is a mix of sharpness and burning, the blood spilling over her fingers as she tries to stem the flow. She had used her last pack of medi-gel on Prangley.

The Brute crawls into the room from the side alley, training its dark, unknowable eyes on the two Marines near her. They swing their rifles toward the beast, but its heavy armored limb covers its face as it advances, and the soldiers are scurrying back even as they fire. The Brute bears down on them quickly.

Jack growls, low and dark and threatening in her throat. She reaches for the weakening power of her biotics one last time, pulls from deep within her, feels the tingling, overwhelming thrum of it rattle her bones in a dangerous promise. She pulls her bloody hand from her shoulder, wincing at the motion, and reloads her shotgun, her fingers shaky and slick with blood. She moves as quickly as she is able, flinging a Warp toward the Brute, the heavy bulk of its mass stopping only momentarily at the weakening of its armor. The Marines fire into its face, and it roars in anger, flinging a heavy arm out toward them and slamming them into the shelf, flattening them with a sickening crunch of bones. They fall to the floor, limp. The Brute's eyes round on Jack, and she swears she sees something furious and hungry in them. She pushes to her feet, her legs quaking beneath her, her arm raised with her shotgun trained on the beast. She can hear the on-going gunfight outside the building, can only hope Darrow's men make it through the alley in time before this Brute takes her out.

She clenches her jaw, spits blood into the dirt at her feet and bellows a ferocious war cry as she lets off two rounds at the beast. The Brute is unfazed, advancing quickly, and Jack is fumbling with a new heat sink, her biotics charging too slowly, her legs giving way beneath her so that she falls to one knee, catching herself with one hand in the bloody dirt.

The rage is numbing and welcome, flooding her system in sweet release. The sharp tang of blood in her mouth. The heaviness in her bones. The slick sweat lining her skin. The undulating power slowly building in her core. The rumbling quake of the Brute's advancing steps. The way the air feels dark and violent and uncompromising. Everything speaks of war to her. Battle. Fight. Need.

It tastes like freedom to her.

She can see the sharp, jagged lines of the Brute's teeth when she finally realizes she will die.

Something happens.

The Brute roars in painful fury, the bright bloom of blue pulsing from behind it, and then a woman clad in deep red, light armor is swiftly climbing up the beast's back, perching along its shoulders before releasing an unending barrage of her submachine gun in its head. The whole room echoes with the animal's dark bellowing and flashes of gunfire. One of the Brute's lumbering arms swings up uselessly to grasp at the limber woman, but she ducks easily, emptying a heat sink in the beast's skull before blowing one last Warp into its weakened form and jumping forward off the falling creature. It crashes to the ground at her feet and she swipes a hand through the air, enveloping her and Jack in a Barrier just as two Marauders come through the hole in the wall from the alley. Their bullets bounce off harmlessly, and then the woman's omni-tool is flaring, bright and illuminating in the moonlit room, her Overload crackling through the air to the two figures before her. The Marauders' shields blink out as they stumble back, shaking their heads to clear the sharp pain. She lands two bullets in their skulls before they can register her movement.

Four marines, wearing similar colors as the woman, come through the hole in the wall then, whipping their weapons around to check for Reaper forces, and then signaling others behind them. Jack watches from her kneel on the floor as Marines rush by, running along the alley outside their war-torn room. She recognizes some from November Company.

"Ma'am," one soldier in red calls to the woman with her back to Jack, "the south alley is clear. Only stragglers left in the surrounding buildings."

"Good." The woman holsters her submachine gun. "Dispatch them quickly and start setting up forward camp. We've got wounded here."

Jack blinks. There is something familiar about the swift efficiency of the woman's voice. She grunts in pain as she moves to stand, one hand braced against the shelf beside her to bear her weight. "Who the fuck are you?" she rasps.

The woman chuckles, turning to face Jack, her short, dark ponytail whipping around her. Her broad face is pale and lined with a smirk, blue eyes glinting at Jack, one eyebrow raised. "Grateful as always, I see."

Jack blows an exasperated breath through her lips, her body suddenly heavy and trembling and barely standing. "Fuck me. Miranda."

Miranda smiles, and it lights something fierce in Jack she's too stubborn to admit is relief. She plants her hands on her hips and leans her weight to one leg. "Whiskey Company. At your service."


	2. No Way to Live

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money

Whiskey and November

Chapter Two: No Way to Live

" _Somewhere beneath it all, there are screams. Screams that drag deep into your heart and stay there. Bloody and sharp and tasting like the quiet regret of lives unlived_. _"_ \- On the frontlines of London, Jack and Miranda contemplate the end of things. A not-quite-love story in three parts.

Jack grunts in pain, teeth clenched tight as she moves one hand to release the straps of her gauntlets and shoulder guards, the dark green of her armor splattered with her own blood. She sits along a makeshift cot in one of the tents of the forward operating base. She can see the bright beam of their destination not far in the distance, the Destroyer guarding it obscured by damaged buildings, the sounds of warfare sounding off around them. Everywhere there are wounded soldiers. She can make out several Alliance officers trading information and strategy with a handful of turians and asari over a holographic map just past the cots to her right. On her left, a band of krogan and a few intermittent turians are cataloguing the remaining weapons and passing out rifles to the gathering troops.

"You took a pretty good hit to the shoulder there."

Jack sighs at the sound of Miranda's voice beside her and she looks up from her dismantling of armor to catch the other woman's eyes. "Not the worst I've taken. By far." The medi-gel applied by a field medic a few minutes earlier is slowly numbing the pain, the tender and torn flesh of her shoulder slowly anesthetizing, the blood clotting. Jack sits on the cot in her armored greaves and a black sleeveless undershirt.

Miranda shifts her weight to one hip and crosses her arms. "I don't doubt it. Can't say the same for your kids though." Her voice drops slightly, her gaze shifting several cots over where she can see what's left of Jack's students lying out and being treated.

There is a low growl in the back of her throat as Jack gathers the black undershirt and pulls it over her head, wincing slightly at the sharp pain of the motion. "I'm not exactly in the mood for a lecture, princess, so if you don't mind, lay off about the fucking kids." Something sinks inside her then, sharp and jagged, her eyes unable to meet those of her wounded and exhausted students several feet away.

Miranda scoffs. "No lecture intended. Only a comment." Her eyes are still leveled across the way. She can see the gaunt cheeks and trembling form of one young girl. She stares blankly at the ground as a salarian wraps bandages around her bloody elbow. She has dark hair like Oriana, brushing her shoulders, tangled with knots and corrupted Cannibal flesh. Miranda swallows and looks back to Jack.

There is a large, slow blooming bruise along the biotic's ribs, just under the cotton of her black sports bra, the flesh of her abdomen swollen and black, the blood dark just beneath her skin. It blots out the lines of her tattoos like a threat. "Yeah, well…fuck off. They've been through enough." Jack's fingers run along the enflamed skin of her ribs, the memory of the gunshot vibrant and forceful. Rather the shot to the shoulder than the stomach, she thinks.

Miranda only watches Jack, unfazed by her gruff dismissal. "You kept them alive so far."

Jack scoffs. "Not much of them."

Miranda purses her lips and looks behind her toward the conversing officers planning the next trek through the London streets. "They're not done yet, you know. None of us are."

Jack pulls a heavy breath through her lungs and grabs for the bandages beside her. "Are you going to help me or not?" she growls, her eyes flashing toward Miranda's.

Miranda raises a brow as she looks down at the other woman. There is something dark and unreachable in Jack's gaze. She stares up at Miranda, her hand gripping the bandages tightly, her knuckles raw and blistered. Miranda sighs and uncrosses her arms, lowering to a squat beside Jack. "I forgot how endearing you could be," she drawls, grabbing the bandages from Jack and pushing her arm up unceremoniously to better attend to the wound along her ribs.

" _Ow_ ," Jack intones, glaring down at Miranda by her side. "Watch the arm. That fucking hurt."

Miranda ignores her. "I know it's difficult for you _not_ to complain. About anything. But do try to restrain yourself for a moment."

Jack pulls a sharp breath through her nostrils and opens her mouth to comment, but only a small yelp of pain makes it out as Miranda tightens the bandages around her ribs. Her eyes flash at the dark-haired woman. "What the fuck are you doing here anyway? And leading a unit?"

Miranda reaches around Jack to spread the bandages, the sharp tang of the wounded woman's sweat and blood gripping her. "The Alliance will take all the help it can get at this point. Having leadership experience puts me at an advantage."

Jack sneers. "Guess the world really has gone to shit. Who's the dumbass that gave you a squad?"

Miranda narrows her eyes at Jack and leans forward once more, her fingers running along Jack's hot skin as she continues wrapping. "Shepard vouched for me."

She snorts. "Of course he did."

Miranda raises a brow. "He vouched for you."

Jack can feel Miranda's hot breath along her shoulder. She frowns. "Never said he was smart."

Miranda chuckles and the sound is so foreign and unfamiliar between them.

Jack swallows tightly and looks away from the woman. "Everyone's on his dick anyway. Guess I can't be too surprised they gave you Whiskey Company."

Miranda's eyes are on Jack's wound, her nimble fingers fastening the end of the bandage just under her sports bra. "No one _gave_ me anything."

Jack flicks her questioning gaze to the woman, lowering her arm slowly as Miranda takes it in her hand, her omni-tool flaring bright as she scans the gunshot wound along Jack's shoulder.

Miranda's voice is low and filled with something Jack thinks sounds like weariness. "Our commander was killed in the third wave heading from base camp, just moments after his second was killed. I took control. Instructed the men, and they followed." Miranda narrows her eyes at the bloodied hole in Jack's shoulder. "It's cauterizing. You can start wrapping this."

Jack shifts her gaze to glance at the ruined flesh of her shoulder. "Listen, Icecrotch – "

"No, you listen," Miranda interrupts, pushing off her knees and standing once more. "I'm not here for you. I'm here for Shepard. And Oriana. And for myself." She takes a slow breath in. "I'm here because I _want_ to be. And because I can do some good. Like saving your ass, for instance." She motions toward Jack, one hand planting itself on her hip.

Jack's eyes narrow and her nostrils flare. "I didn't need your help."

"Save it. This war is too important for your pride."

"Or for your fucked-up self-righteousness."

Miranda's lips turn into a deep frown. "This isn't about you versus me." She huffs, grinding her teeth harshly. "It's about us versus _them_." She thrusts an arm out and points toward the distant beam. The howling of Reaper forces is insistent and constant over the horizon. The barrage of gunfire and explosives unending. The rending beam of the Destroyer overwhelming. The loud crunching of crumbling buildings threatening.

Somewhere beneath it all, there are screams. Screams that drag deep into your heart and stay there. Bloody and sharp and tasting like the quiet regret of lives unlived.

Jack does not move her hardened gaze from Miranda. She clamps her mouth tight and eyes the other woman. Feels the breath heavy and rough in her chest.

Miranda sighs and drops her outstretched arm to hang limply at her side. She shakes her head, dark strands of hair that escaped her ponytail plastered to her cheeks with sweat and grime. There's a smear of bloodied dirt across her temple, the paleness of her skin cast in dark shadows. Her shoulders sag with the weight of something heavier than exhaustion. Something bone-deep and ragged. Something she carries around in the privacy of her heart and reaches for silently, needfully, with the ache of inevitability.

Jack thinks for the first time since finding her in the field, how dirty and worn and tired Miranda looks. How small and beleaguered. How battered and filthy.

How fierce. How undefeated. How resolute.

Jack swallows and looks to the ground. Rubs a hand along the back of her neck. She hangs her elbows over her knees and releases a weary breath. She glances up to Miranda and finds the woman staring unabashedly at her. "You think saving me was 'doing good'?" She does not know why she asks it. Or why she needs to know.

Miranda's brows furrow, her arms crossing once more over the hard red of her armored chest. "The kids still need you," she begins, nodding in the direction of Jack's students. "And the war still needs them. So yes. Maybe you're not ready to go yet. And if I can help in that…" she pauses, her eyes steady on Jack. She clears her throat. "Then I have your back."

Jack purses her lips, her jaw clenching tight. There is something in the way Miranda looks at her that makes her unquestioning. Makes her sure and ready and anxious. Her fingers itch for her shotgun. The slow, steady pull of a smile hints at her lips. Blood-splattered and cracked. "And I will have yours."

Miranda watches her hesitantly for a moment, and then the gruff voice of an Alliance Major calling her name catches her attention. She turns to find the Major waving her over. She nods, and then turns back to Jack. "We'll be moving soon. Fix up that wound and get the rest of the students on their feet. November Company still needs you."

Jack cocks her head in acknowledgement, a light smirk along her lips. "See you on the field then."

* * *

"How's the shoulder?" Darrow asks Jack as they stand at the edge of camp, ready to move out. His breather helmet is gone, bandages wrapped haphazardly around his head, just above his right eye. There is the dried stream of blood running from his temple, his whole right cheek swelling slowly, a dim purple. With his helmet gone she can better see the dark shadow of stubble along his chin, the dusting of grey in his short brown hair.

Jack shrugs her good shoulder. "Numb enough for me to keep going. How's the face?" She nods to his bandages.

Darrow sighs and rubs his jaw tenderly. "Better than it looks. Marauder got a lucky shot. He didn't get another one," he finishes darkly, his chuckle ragged with his hoarse voice.

Jack crosses her arms as Miranda walks up beside them. "Ready for payback?"

"More than."

"Whiskey's ready," Miranda adds as she stops beside the two, releasing the catch on her holster and grabbing her submachine gun. She cocks the reload and rests the barrel along her shoulder, shifting her weight to one hip, waiting.

"Lawson," Darrow greets, his head inclined in a nod. "Move 'em out," he calls, his voice bellowing in the dark night, and the two companies of soldiers head out from camp.

Darrow takes point, Jack's students spreading in a line just behind Darrow's first complement of men. The marines of Whiskey Company take both flanks, with Jack and Miranda coming up on one side. Darrow motions his first line of Marines into the nearby building, and then signals Miranda to take the alleys around it. She nods mutely, calling orders through her comm. link. Jack sends four of her students into the building with Darrow, the others following her around the destroyed structure. Everyone is tense and breathing heavily, muscles taut with shaky readiness. The howls of Reaper forces are echoing through the empty spaces of the dying city, the distant sound of gunfire promising a coming fight. The air itself is tangible and heavy like corpses.

"Christ," Miranda breathes darkly, eyeing the long stretch of empty alleyway ahead of them, the shredded remains of several bodies lining the dirt along the path. "These people had no chance."

Jack snorts. "Curse of the civilian." She narrows her eyes and tries to listen, advancing further into the alley of abandoned London shops. "Better to die fighting."

Miranda glances to her momentarily but continues on. "These were simple people once. Just going to work. Going home to their families. Going about their daily lives." She catches sight of a long-dead woman in the dirt, her blue dress torn up to her waist, her leg a bloody canvas, the sharp jagged edge of a fractured bone puncturing the pale flesh of her thigh. Her body slumps against the locked door of a shop, broken and dirt-smeared, her fingers curled stiffly like talons against the door. Her face is a mask of horror hidden beneath dark strands of hair. Miranda swallows when she sees the claws marks against the dark door. She moves two fingers through the air for her men to continue. She steps over broken glass and feels every crunch beneath her boots as though the shards are lodged in her chest. "How could they fight something like this?" She shakes her head, breathes deep, jaw clenched tight.

"With everything you've got," Jack answers without hesitation. She kicks the limp arm of a mutilated Cannibal in her path, her snarl sharp and natural beneath her breath. She throws a heated glance toward Miranda and catches the blue of her eyes in the moonlight. "That kind of animalistic rage is in everyone. You've just got to find it."

Miranda furrows her brows, slinking up to the edge of the shop's wall, peeking around the corner before motioning her squad to follow. "Nice choice of words. 'Animalistic'." She cannot help the hint of contempt that laces her tone when she says the words, the barely-there upturn of her lip.

Jack rolls her eyes. "Don't get all holier-than-thou on me now, Barbie. Animalistic is exactly what we fucking need right now."

The word tastes like ashes along Miranda's tongue. "No. Calculated. Sharp. Enduring. That is what we need to win this." Miranda stoops behind a mountain of rubble from a blown-out wall along the alley and eyes the path up ahead.

Jack catches sight of a sharp turn in the alleyway ahead that leads into a main street and waves a hand back to summon two of her students up, instructing them to start up their Barriers and fall behind the four Marines following her and Miranda. Jack heaves a deep breath in and feels the trickle of biotic power lighting along her spine, crawling up her back in tantalizing assurance. " _No_ ," she sneers, pushing the hair from her ponytail off her cheek. "Brutal. Primal. Raging. That's what's going to get Earth back from these fuckers." Her jaw clenches tight with the words. Something familiar and searing begins to settle along her bones.

Miranda finds the words sharp and unquestionable along her tongue when she breaks from cover and moves into the street from the narrow alley. "Rage is no way to live, Jack."

Jack scoffs, following the ex-Cerberus operative. "And you would know how, princess?" She finds the anger easy and hot, burrowed tight in her chest where the weight of _past_ and _horror_ and _help me_ pulls her deeper, festering in the dark recesses of her heart. She grinds her teeth harshly, her growl building in her chest and finding its way smooth and welcomed along her throat. Her fingers are tight along the cold metal of her shotgun, her whole body thrumming in undulating power, taut and primed, begging to snap in glorious destruction. Her eyes find the back of Miranda's head and bore heatedly and furiously into it. Her mouth opens in righteous wrath, her chest tight with remembrance and the needful grip of unforgiveness.

There are no words.

That heavy sting of a past never forgotten. Never lost. Never a stranger in the dark night where dreams are only nightmares and waking is only shattering. That sharp brand of pain that comes from fighting and clawing and rending your bloody fists through walls that only crack but never crumble. That silent scream that rips through your throat in raw desperation. The fear. The falling. The rupture.

The furious, frantic rejection of a life that is anything less than _your own_. The clambering dead hands of a past that will not rest, that demands to bury its roots deep and unreachable in a heart that can't remember what the world looks like without the sharp tang of bitterness.

Jack watches the steady form of Miranda, her lip trembling, her eyes looking but not _seeing_.

What _the fuck_ does she know about rage?

"Coming in hot on the south side!" Darrow's shout through the comm. link in each of their ears snaps their collective gazes to the south side of the main street they had just poured into. A flood of Reaper forces is on them in a moment.

Everything is instinctual. Everything is immediate.

There is a biotic explosion that encompasses the whole street in blinding blue light. When it slowly rescinds, it is chaos in the streets.

Miranda fires from her cover of a bent and damaged steel wall, calling orders into her comm. link. She glances over her cover and sees a Ravager step into the open space of the street. She sends a Warp toward the monster instantly, the Ravager stumbling and faltering at the hit to its armor. One of its sacks bursts and spills a clutch of Swarmers into the dust-strewn street. Miranda curses under her breath but does not stop her barrage of submachine fire. The Ravager turns the eye of its light-weight canon toward her position, and she has barely enough time to send another wave of her biotic Warp toward the creature before its canon blows a fiery dent into her cover, only inches from her hairline. She falls back against her cover, reloading her heat sink, counting out the timing of the Ravager's canon fire. When she hears a lull in the creature's firing sequence, she leans out of cover and unloads her weapon into the sack of mutilated flesh and corrupted technology. The Ravager wails in pain a moment before it collapses to the floor, still.

She does not hesitate. She aims for the nearest Marauder and the creature is falling back, neck shot out in a grotesque splatter of dark gore. She rounds on a Cannibal next.

And so it goes. And so it goes. For the first wave, and the second, and the third. Until it is only madness and blood and the welcomed throb of aching muscles. Until it is the bright flare of her omni-tool in the deadening black of night. Until it is the exhilarating hum of biotic power that lights along her neck just before the release. Until it is the steady thrum of her pistol releasing, the light and swift recoil, the reassuring pull of its power in her palms.

Until all she sees is red and night and glowing, unknowable eyes. Eyes that flash like memory and gleam like ages past. Like a history. Like a record. She wonders what stories those eyes tell. She wonders what secrets and what knowledge those eyes hold. She wonders what remnant, what ripple of civilizations past, are held trapped, stifled, lost within those eyes.

She wonders how much is Reaper and how much isn't.

How much is worth grieving and how much isn't.

She wonders if anyone ever really wins such a war.

Miranda glances left just as one of the attacking Banshees charges into the close quarters of Jack's bunkered down students. Her eyes hone in on the dark-haired girl she had seen at camp earlier, getting her damaged elbow bandaged. Even from here, Miranda can see the dusting of freckles on the girl's cheeks. She can see the sharp glint to her eyes as she whips her head to the closing Banshee. The subtle flare of blue encompassing her body in reflexive action. The dark tangle of her short hair plastered to her cheeks and neck with sweat and worse. The hunched position, the defiant lift of her chin, the firm, trembling clench of her hands along her pistol. The hesitant, barely-there step back as she readies for the hit, as her body tenses, as her whole form floods with instant and uncontrollable terror.

The Banshee's scream is vivid and immediate, echoing in all their ears along the war-battered street, even as its eyes and raised claws are trained on the young girl before it.

Miranda watches the scene for only a second. But it is enough. Enough for her body to move without her volition. Enough for a fierce and savage fury to light within her. Enough for the terror and desperate ache to fill her with recollection. She is running.

The young girl's eyes catch Miranda's for the breath of a second and it is enough.

Oriana.

She sees her sister in the girl's eyes. In her form. In her defiance. In her natural and blameless fear.

In the swift and unexpected reminder that we are but an instant in this endless universe.

An instant.

It is all it takes.

Miranda registers the distant cry of Jack's voice somewhere in the back of her mind. But it is drowned out by the hollow, deafening shriek of the Banshee, the sharp crackling of biotic energy as the beast's claws scrape along her Barrier, the heart-wrenching scream of the young biotic behind her.

The heavy swing of the powerful Banshee brings Miranda to her knees, even as her Barrier flashes bright and unrelenting around their two forms. Her biotic force field flickers out as the Banshee recoils. Miranda reacts instantly, thrusting a hand behind her and biotically Throwing the dark-haired girl behind her even farther, crashing into the huddle of two other students several feet back, out of the Banshee's reach.

Miranda doesn't have enough time to charge another attack, instead twisting her firearm to unleash a string of bullets in the Banshee's chest, tumbling low and right to avoid the biotic projectile of the creature. She rolls along the dirt and then steadies herself with her knees in the rough concrete and gloved palms along the ground, her pistol tight in her grip, her body sore and stiff, the awkward cut of her shin guards digging into her legs as she pushes to her feet. It is only a matter of seconds before the Banshee is biotically transporting closer to Miranda and swiping a jagged set of claws close to her throat. She bends back quick enough to miss the Reaper abomination's gash along her throat and chest but the sudden searing along her thigh as she stumbles back tells her the Banshee's claws connected sharply and deeply with her leg. The full force of her shields blinks out at the attack, the blood splashing in a wide arc from the tear along her armored thigh.

Miranda screams in agony and falls back against the ground, unable to bear her weight after the sudden wound to her thigh. Her hands swing forward, her pistol releasing a barrage of bullets at the Banshee as she falls back against the concrete with a heavy thud, a hand sweeping up to fling one last Warp into the corrupted asari body. She can see its dark, hollow eyes bearing down on her when the hissing sound of her empty heat sink reaches her ears.

She thinks she sees the faint reflection of her own bright irises in the Banshees eyes when the vivid light of her omni-blade materializes along her arm and she buries it deep in the weak and wounded creature's neck. The dark splash of tainted blood splatters across her face, the sharp, metallic taste branding her tongue like a warning. The howling, shrieking form of the Banshee slowly disintegrates atop her. Its form is shifting and then ethereal and then flickering like ash on the wind. Miranda spits into the dirt beside her, rolling over to brace her hands in the bloody pool of dust along the concrete, her thigh shaking violently with painful spasms.

The fighting does not stop around her. Suddenly, she feels a hand grip tightly along her elbow and haul her up. She cries out at the pain, her feet stumbling to find purchase in the rubble, her thigh throbbing and searing all at once. She whips her gaze to find Jack beside her, one hand curled tightly around her arm, the other secured to her shotgun, her finger anxious and eager along the trigger as she scans the street for any nearby Reaper forces. Any other Cannibals or Marauders are taken out quickly by the marines of Whiskey and November Company. Jack turns her heated gaze to Miranda then, pulling her weak and stumbling form over to the cover of a concrete barrier on the side of the street, shoving her down behind it.

Jack peeks out and catches sight of her students launching biotic projectiles into the remaining forces, Darrow's unit pouring from the recently cleared buildings and reinforcing the men along the street. Jack takes the moment to glare heatedly at Miranda as she slumps against the concrete cover and waits for the medi-gel to kick in. "What the fuck was that?"

"Just shut up and give me your trauma kit," Miranda rasps. Her voice is a broken growl, her teeth grit tight, her whole body overcome with violent trembling.

Jack narrows her eyes at her momentarily, then silently pulls an auto-injector from her belt and uncaps it with the same hand, her thumb flicking the case off. She clenches her jaw tight, stabbing the auto-injector into Miranda's ruined thigh without warning, precisely aimed along a thin sliver of exposed flesh between her shredded leg pads, so that the thick needle sinks deep and quick.

The former operative cries out, tears hot on her lids instantly, her lungs clenching tight around her scream of pain.

Jack holds the injector pressed to her leg for several seconds, letting the adrenaline and hypertonic saline flood Miranda's bloodstream to counteract the impending hemorrhagic shock while the medi-gel works the wound. She pulls it from her thigh wordlessly, her eyes still focused and narrowed at Miranda. She tosses the empty cartridge along the debris-strewn street.

Miranda licks her lips and rolls her head to eye Jack, one hand gripping the collar of her light armor, feeling the frantic thump of her heartbeat beneath her fingers, the other held tight against her shredded thigh to stem the flow of blood, the whole pad of her leg armor punctured and tattered. "Is the girl safe?" she breathes raggedly, the words anxious and like copper in her mouth. She swallows thickly and tries to breathe.

Jack huffs. "O'dair? Shit, yeah. She's fine." Jack settles back on her haunches and eyes Miranda with dark and narrowed eyes. "But what _the fuck_ , Miranda?" she repeats. Jack glances over their cover to make sure no more Reaper forces are advancing along the street. Darrow is already moving into the next intersection of London cross streets. Her students look to her for direction and she motions them to follow the marines. When she looks back at Miranda, the woman is pushing herself from her slump against the concrete barrier and steadying herself on her feet. Jack joins her in standing.

Jack shakes her head at Miranda's non-answer. "You're fucking crazy, you know that?"

"I saw Oriana."

Miranda's words are so soft in the loud night that Jack thinks she imagines them for a minute, her hand reaching out to steady Miranda's wavering form. "What?" she barely gets out in a whisper of disbelief.

Miranda swallows tightly and looks up to catch Jack's eyes. She feels the steadying assurance of the woman's hand along her arm, the constant, heartening hum of her biotics, ready and flaring and dangerous. The flickering question of her gaze along her own eyes, the irises warm and hazel and like the soft brushes of a painter's strokes. Miranda blinks at the sight, licks her lips. She does not try to hide her uneasy lean against Jack's toned form. "The girl. I saw Oriana for a moment and I just…reacted."

Jack blinks at Miranda, her lips parting. "You stupid bitch," she breathes softly, shaking her head.

Miranda yanks her arm from Jack's hold and braces herself against the concrete barrier. "Shut up. Just…shut up," she tapers off, her eyes lowering to the floor.

Jack opens her mouth to speak but finds no words. So she clamps her mouth shut and watches Miranda instead.

The woman's fingers are clenched tightly along the concrete of the barrier beside her. She pulls a sharp breath through her lips and lowers herself slowly, cautiously, to retrieve her pistol as it lies in the dirt at her feet. When she straightens, she looks to Jack instinctively, and there is something distant and unreachable to her gaze.

Miranda thinks back to her last moments with Oriana. The trembling warmth of her hands in hers. The hesitant, shaky laugh as she brushed her hair from her face. The desperate, knowing grasp of each other, as the younger girl's shoulders shuddered in their embrace. The warm whisper of Miranda's words along Oriana's tear-stained cheek.

The way she smiled when she said goodbye.

The way she fucking _smiled_.

Miranda grasps needfully at the grip of her submachine gun, her free hand curled tightly into a fist at her side. Her breath is short and aching in her chest, her whole body trembling in raw exhaustion. "Rage is no way to live," she repeats.

Jack sucks a breath in at the other woman's words.

Miranda brings her gaze to Jack, and it is everything dangerous and desolate and drenched in _could have beens_. She cocks the reload on her weapon and straightens her back.

The dark horizon of London is haunting behind her.

Miranda shakes her head, her voice a hollow regret. "It's just a way to die."

She turns from Jack then, limping away, and Jack is filled with something she will not be able to name for many years.


	3. Ash and Salt and Freedom

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Whiskey and November

Chapter Three: Ash and Salt and Freedom

"' _It's the end times, Jack,' she whispers breathlessly through the raging hail of gunfire and explosions around them. Just below in the valley lies their death, or their freedom. 'You ready?'"_ \- On the frontlines of London, Jack and Miranda contemplate the end of things. A not-quite-love story in three parts.

Jack and Miranda find themselves leaning back against one of the Alliance's M-080 Infantry Fighting Vehicles that made it across the stretch of London leading up to the beam. The artillery unit is just ahead, the collapsed hull of the guarding Destroyer leveled close by the tanks, the fiery explosion of the Thanix canons sifting resulting ash and embers through the air. The city is smoke-filled and rotting.

Shepard and Admiral Anderson converse several vehicles away, the crowd of soldiers in the street massing for the final run toward the beam. Even now, more Reaper forces are making their way through the city toward their position.

The two women resting against the hull of an IFV simply try to catch their breath in anticipation of the next few minutes, waiting for the round-up of squads.

Jack turns her head to watch Miranda beside her, a dark, hoarse chuckle leaving her lips. "I'll admit, Cheerleader, those were some wild moves back there." She inclines her head back to nod behind them, where the flood of Marauder and Cannibal corpses stretches across the hollow London streets, a testament to the slow and hard-won battle of the still-dying city.

Miranda laughs softly, licking her chapped lips, rubbing a hand over her forehead. "Looks like you don't have the patent on 'crazy' anymore." She turns her own gaze to the woman beside her.

Jack barks a laugh, nudging an elbow into Miranda's side, softly though, conscious of the woman's weariness and injury. Softly enough for her to question the move herself. "Not by a long shot."

Miranda smirks, leaning her head back on the vehicle. She can feel the heat from Jack beside her. It is an odd thing to not want to move away, to feel steadied and reassured and calm by the presence.

Calm.

The last word she'd use to describe Jack.

But here they stand together, breathing the same air, bleeding the same red, looking out at the same last threat to their world.

A world that scars them and loves them and pushes them still. A world that, even now, finds ways to surprise her.

Miranda sighs softly, flicking her gaze to Jack beside her. The tattooed woman sniffs loudly, wiping a hand across her nose and then spitting into the dirt. She rolls her shoulders and winces slightly at the distant but constant throbbing of her wound. She feels Miranda's eyes on her and turns, one brow raised. "What?" she whispers on a curious chuckle.

"Mm." Miranda purses her lips and shakes her head. "Just…" She pauses, laughs, reaches a hand up to pull the tie of her ponytail loose, fingers raking through her dark, tangled hair.

Jack watches the motion silently. There is something comforting and unnamable about it she cannot place.

Miranda levels a crooked grin in Jack's direction. "Ever think we'd make it this far?"

"Fuck yeah," Jack answers without hesitation, crossing her gauntleted arms over the dark green of her chestplate. "Goddamn Reapers didn't stand a chance." Even now, hidden behind the bravado and the confidence and the self-assurance, there is the sharp twinge of _maybe_ lying in wait. The hesitant, tremulous thought that this is just illusion. A sick afterimage. The ugly, desperate dream of the dead.

Jack wonders if really, she died back there on the streets of London, broken and unknown and without witness.

She wonders if this is what death feels like when the soul has not let go.

Miranda cocks her head at Jack's answer, her lips parting in thought a moment, and then closing swiftly.

Jack notices the motion, her gaze falling softly on the woman's lips for a moment before finding their way back to her gaze. "You didn't?

Miranda furrows her brow, the words slow and hesitant in her throat, her weight shifting against the IFV behind her so that she turns fully to Jack, leaning one shoulder against the jeep. She moves a hand unconsciously to the wound along her thigh, wincing only slightly now that the medi-gel has temporarily sealed the gash, the high of the trauma kit's auto-injector slowly dulling. "I meant us."

Jack blinks in question at her.

"I meant," she starts, eyes questioning and needful on Jack. She feels her lungs clench tightly in the soot-filled air. "Did you ever think _we'd_ get to this point? Fighting together. Covering each other. Not ripping each other's throats out?" she ends on a weary chuckle.

Jack shrugs one shoulder, quirking her lip in a nonchalant smirk. She keeps her gaze on Miranda. "We worked together even when we _wanted_ to rip each other's throats out."

Miranda narrows her eyes at Jack. "I had a responsibility to the mission," she breathes harshly. "It was never anything personal."

"It was for me." Jack's words are dark and seethed through clenched teeth, her fingers tightening in their grip of her crossed arms.

Miranda looks out toward the other Alliance soldiers gathering around Anderson. She can catch a glimpse of Shepard talking with Garrus and James. Her throat is tight with words she will never say. She hears the heavy sigh of Jack beside her and turns to find the biotic moving from her lean against the jeep to face her fully, uncrossing her arms as one hand rubs the back of her neck sorely.

"Fuck, just…look, Miranda." Jack rolls her eyes and leans her shoulder back against the vehicle, mirroring the other woman's position, her other hand planting itself along her hip. "You were Cerberus. That kind of shit doesn't just disappear."

Miranda opens her mouth to object but Jack continues.

"I know, I fucking get it!" she interrupts. "You're not with them anymore. But damn, Miranda. Don't you fucking get it? I'm not exactly the epitome of mental health," she scoffs, one hand raised up to tap a finger against her forehead. "Forgive and forget isn't something I practice. But I'd be stupid to turn away your help now when we need everyone we've got to have even a fucking sliver of a chance here."

Miranda straightens from her lean. "You say it like I was the Cerberus operative who sanctioned those experiments on you."

"Might as well have been," Jack snaps. No. No, that's wrong. But she won't to admit to it.

Miranda's mouth opens in clear contempt. She scoffs, planting a hand on a hip. "Yeah, you've definitely got the pity party down."

"Fuck you."

"And the childish vocabulary."

" _Fuck_ y-" Jack stops, biting her tongue. She huffs an indignant breath out and narrows her eyes at Miranda. "Look, Tits-For-Brains," she growls.

Miranda raises a brow at the moniker.

"We are what we are. And it doesn't look like we're changing anytime soon." She groans, twisting the sore muscles in her neck. "I'm not about to apologize for that. This is me. Always will be. And you knew that when you offered to back me up on the frontlines," she finishes, an arm pointed out across the horizon to signify the words. She drops the arm and lifts her shoulders in question. "I don't know what you expected but I'm not about to braid your fucking hair."

Miranda sneers, leaning her shoulder back against the jeep beside them. "I don't exactly relish the thought of your hands on me anyway."

Jack raises a brow at the words, her look slowly dragging over Miranda's form, her voice a teasing lull. "That right?"

Miranda groans in frustration. "Oh for the love of -" She stops, rubbing a hand down her face and leveling her gaze on Jack, unabashedly, unrelenting. "We have our orders. We're going to _have_ to work together. Can we do that?"

"Well, that's the question now, isn't it, Buttercup?" Jack's eyes are a dark enticement, her lean toward Miranda both forward and testing.

"'Buttercup'? What the fu –"

Jack waves her off. "It's not a matter of orders. It's a matter of you and me. This?" she motions between them. "This doesn't work unless we both want it to."

Miranda swallows her words.

Jack braces a hand against the IFV beside them as she smirks. "So, you want us to work?"

Miranda eyes her suspiciously as she asks the question. She cannot help the sharp tangle of emotion that pulls at her gut every time Jack is near. It tells of anger and heat and desperation.

And excitement.

Miranda licks her lips and lifts her chin, her fingers thrumming softly along the jeep in thought. "If I said yes?"

Jack is silent, her teasing smirk faltering slightly, her eyes careful on Miranda. She mulls the thought over for a moment before straightening from her lean toward the other woman. She shrugs noncommittally. "Then points for surprising the fuck out of me."

Miranda frowns, the sigh of frustration frothing in her throat. "Can you utter a single sentence without resorting to swearing?"

Jack only shakes her head in slow resignation. "Can you utter a single sentence without sounding like a pompous tight-ass?"

Miranda grumbles, her fingers curling along the metal of the jeep in her indignation. "It seems neither of us is likely to rise to the other's expectations."

Jack blows an incredulous breath through her lips. "Honey, if you had expectations, that was your first mistake."

"Damn it, Jack," Miranda bites out, her fist slamming into the jeep beside her.

Jack flicks her gaze to the motion in mild amusement, but there is something darker and secret in the look, something yearning and hot.

Miranda straightens, running her hands through her loose hair. "This is bloody ridiculous."

Jack cocks her head and bites her words out. "You're telling me. I'm trying to beat the shit out of Reapers and instead I've got Ms. Cerberus Bubble-Butt to deal with."

Miranda cannot help the curl of distaste that lights along her mouth. " _Ex_ \- Cerberus," she stresses, her heavy sigh of aggravation broiling hot and insistent in her throat. "Why am I even trying to prove that to you?"

Jack shrugs a shoulder and raises a brow. "Guilt, maybe?" Even as she says it she regrets it. There is something stronger than fear or hate or distrust working between them now. Something that breeds in the close battles and sailing bullets and intrinsic need that comes from small squad units. Their days fighting Collectors are far-away and insignificant in the face of the Reaper threat. But it does not lessen the basic lingering connection that has blossomed, unknown and unwanted, between them. The familiar feel of each other's heat close by, the expectant sound of the other's voice, the unquestioning, inherent trust that comes with backs to each other and mutual life at the end of the same bloody corridor.

Jack knows it's not guilt that urges Miranda forward, urges her closer to her. She _knows_. But she will not voice the truth. She will not name it. She will not put words to this blistering tangle of emotion she is too afraid to even look at. To chance. To hope for.

No.

There is nothing but bitterness between them. This she can count on. Even when it hurts her in ways she still doesn't understand.

"I am more than my past," Miranda bites out. "You of all people should understand that." Her features are sharp and hardened, the familiar twinge of anger settling soft and searing in her gut.

Jack eyes her silently for a moment, jaw clenched tight. "I know," she seethes.

"Do you?" Miranda questions, taking a step closer.

Jack's hands curl into fists at her sides and she can smell the light musk of sweat from Miranda's closeness. It is alluring and barely-there beneath the metallic tang of dried blood. Her eyes search Miranda's broad face, finds her blue irises haunting and demanding and thrilling. Finds the heavy pant of her heated breath intoxicating in a way she has never felt before. She frowns, pulling her lips into a tight line. She takes a bold step even closer. "Yes. I fucking _do_."

Miranda pulls a slow, uneven breath in at Jack's proximity. The sharp brown of her eyes tell of forcefulness. Danger. Unapology. It lights something breathless and treacherous in her. Miranda lifts her chin and holds Jack's gaze. "Then you should know that I have no intentions to fight a pointless battle. There is enough in this galaxy to hate. I would not add to that." She swallows tightly.

Jack finds the slow, undeniable pull of her lips that promises a wicked smile. "Are you proposing a truce?"

Miranda rolls the word along her tongue a moment, contemplating. "Isn't that what we've been enacting this whole battle?"

Jack shrugs, her lips pursed in thought. She eyes Miranda a moment, unclenching her fists and re-crossing her arms. "I'm not looking for a friend."

Miranda's lids lower, her chest rising steadily with her breath. She swallows thickly and cocks her head to watch Jack. She tries to ignore the promising twist of something unknowable in her gut. Tries to even her voice when she offers a hand between them. "Neither am I," she responds, her words a heady whisper.

Jack's lips part in thought, her eyes narrowing at the dark-haired woman. She tentatively puts her palm forward, grasping Miranda's hand with the cautious and fierce eyes of a wounded animal.

Miranda curls her fingers around Jack's, the rough pads of their armored gloves sliding together. Jack's grip is firm and unrelenting.

"Not friends, then?" Jack asks.

Miranda nods, her grip on Jack's hand tightening. "Not friends."

"Good." Jack releases her hold of Miranda's hand.

There is something ancient and intrinsic passed between them.

Something that tastes of unspokens.

Silent and savage. Thrilling and terrifying. Heated and hesitant.

Something that feels like longing.

* * *

They make it to the top of the hill when Harbinger's first beam rips through the field of soldiers below them. The explosion is deafening and blinding and floods the women with a gripping terror that roots their feet in the dirt.

Miranda looks to Jack and the biotic's brilliant eyes are wide and unblinking.

There is a stirring to Miranda's gut at the sight, the sharp clench in her stomach that tells her this is it. This is the end.

This is the end.

"Fuck me," Jack barely gets out, her breath a short exhale, her throat clenching with the thick swallow of her words. She cannot take her eyes from the field of destruction before them. Soldiers are rushing past them over the hill. The hollow, bellowing blare of Harbinger's beam echoes all the way to their bones.

Somewhere below, Shepard is running.

Miranda licks her lips, her whole body enflamed, her muscles tight with readiness, her feet itching for the dirt beneath their soles, her heart ready for the frantic pounding, the thudding cry of freedom that comes from her sprinting form in the brilliant, devastating light of the Reapers.

Something inside her screams _Run!_

"It's the end times, Jack," she whispers breathlessly through the raging hail of gunfire and explosions around them. Just below in the valley lies their death, or their freedom. "You ready?"

Jack releases a sharp, hoarse chuckle that is half fear and half disbelief. Her fingers curl into fists at her sides and the familiar tremble of biotic power lights at the base of her spine. "Nothing prepares you for this," she gets out in a harsh whisper.

Miranda's hand reaches for the submachine gun strapped to her waist, her whole body poised for the run, her heels digging into the dirt. She glances behind her where far off in the distance, hidden safely behind the barricades of the FOB, are Jack's biotic students. She remembers their faces as they left. The tight brows, the quivering lips. The eyes that spoke of exhaustion and regret and goodbye.

The way they had each hugged Jack, their arms gripping and trembling around her lithe frame.

The small, fierce, defiant form of Jack as she cursed them for their tears.

The way she did not look back as she left them.

Miranda remembers all this. She remembers the quake to Jack's lip. The heavy shudder to her shoulders. The hard lines to her face that speak of more than grief and heartache. That speak of more than inevitability.

Miranda remembers how Jack looks when she cries. It is silent, and steady, and unspeakable.

She doesn't think she will ever share it.

There is something private and sacred, something beautiful to the wet streaks of Jack's cheeks. The way her mascara runs, dark and thick, in lines that tug harsh and insistent on Miranda's heart. In ways she has never felt before.

Jack has since wiped her cheeks.

But Miranda remembers. Miranda knows.

She cannot help the smile that breaks across her face as she looks at Jack.

This moment. This devastating, brutal moment. This break in time where they are simply woman and simply human and simply lost. This moment where everything is taut and sharp and uncontrollable.

Miranda's heart thuds harsh and quick in her chest when she looks at Jack. She doesn't question it. She doesn't try to smother it. She doesn't do anything but reach her fingers tentatively and unapologetically toward hers.

Jack blinks in surprise when she feels Miranda's fingers curl around her own. She cannot feel her heat through their gloves. Cannot feel the smoothness of her palms, or the tender stroke of her fingertips.

But her hand in hers.

Jack swallows thickly and looks up to find Miranda's eyes, bright and fearless, trained on hers.

"See you on the other side?" Miranda whispers breathlessly. There is the shaky lilt of her smile when she says it. The quick and anxious exhale of her breath as she keeps her gaze steady on Jack's.

Jack can only watch her in silence, the world falling into deafening darkness around them. She pulls a sharp breath through her lungs and laughs.

It is so light. And so uncontrollable. So foreign and needed and desperate in her throat.

Jack finds the tears hot against her lids before she realizes it. Her fingers clutch tightly to Miranda's.

The world around them falls apart and they can only watch each other.

Miranda sniffs loudly, her own unexpected tears suddenly warm and irrepressible along her eyes. "You're not my first choice to go out with, that's for sure."

Jack laughs.

The sound is warm and filling and everything Miranda needs at that moment. Everything that steadies her raging heart.

Jack pulls her lip in to stop the laugh, one hand moving to wipe quickly and roughly at her eyes. "Likewise," she chuckles, her voice drenched in fearful anticipation.

There are long moments where they simply watch each other, their hands refusing to unlink from their initial, unexplainable hold.

Jack opens her mouth to speak but nothing comes.

Miranda is silent and still beside her, her smile shaky and wide. Her whole face a promise of the future.

A future she isn't sure is still possible anymore.

The sudden blast of Harbinger's nearby ray tears the breathless moment from them in a deafening explosion. The two women crouch low instantly, their free arms over their heads at the close blast, the rain of dirt over them hard and threatening. They raise themselves back into a standing position to find their hands still linked.

Miranda looks at the connection with furrowed brows and parted lips. She slowly pulls her hand from Jack's.

Jack opens her mouth to object, the words instinctual and natural along her tongue, but she stops. She lets Miranda pull her hand from hers. The touch is missed instantly.

Miranda nods, swallowing tightly and she pulls a slow, heavy breath in. "Time we got moving." She keeps her gaze on Jack for one last moment. Waiting and hopeful and foolish. She swallows the unspoken feeling, pushing it back down where it can stay, forgotten, safe. Buried . When Jack does not move, Miranda straightens her back and turns to the destruction in the valley below. She takes her first step down the hill.

Jack cannot stop the words as they leave her. "Miranda, wait!" she calls, one hand reaching out toward the other woman.

Miranda stops and turns to her, her features questioning, her body tense and ready and aching for the end.

Jack feels her own sharp intake of breath as though it were her last. Miranda is waiting before her.

Everything else is fleeting.

Jack feels the violent clench of her heart in her chest, wild and frantic. She feels the blood hot in her veins. Feels the steady thrum in her bones that tells her _this is it_.

She feels the tender throb of regret settle heavy and immovable in her heart.

"What?" Miranda breathes.

"Oh, _fuck it_ ," she growls – breathless, dark and decided. Jack moves before she can stop herself. One hand reaches for the back of Miranda's neck and pulls her toward her, demanding, without hesitation, with everything of herself. Her lips crash against Miranda's with the warm breath of relief, her tongue hot and needy against hers. Jack's other arm snakes around Miranda's waist, pulling her forcefully against her and the two stumble as they collide together.

Miranda pulls a sharp breath in, her mouth gasping open at the contact, and her hands move instinctively to grip the other woman. There is a moment, a breathless second, where they share breath and life and want. Where they move their mouths in the desperate ache of unfulfilled desire. Where they grasp and pull and _feel_. Where everything falls away but the painful, momentary hope that this is it.

 _This is it_.

A nearby explosion breaks them apart and Miranda tears herself from Jack, a hand moving to her mouth, the other pushing against the other woman's shoulder.

Jack blinks in unexplainable heat before her, licking her lips at the recent contact.

There is a moment of breathless trepidation between them. Miranda's eyes are wide and fixed on Jack's, her hand covering the trembling lip of her mouth.

Jack sighs, her shoulders slumping slightly as she watches Miranda. She finds her voice before she finds her sense. "Kiss goodbye?" The words end on a nervous, breathy chuckle.

Miranda touches her fingers to her lips, finds them swollen and wet and warm. Finds the lingering feel of Jack's mouth only pulling her deeper.

Jack is silent for only a moment longer and then she is clearing her throat, straightening her stance and looking out over the deadly valley that blazes light with their future. "Right then."

Miranda realizes she has only a moment. Only the whisper of a second before she is lost to her, before she is unreachable and distant and gone from her. She feels the frenzied thud of her heart against her ribs, feels the steady ache of _yes_ and _need_ and _now_ in her gut. Miranda lowers her hand from her mouth and steps toward Jack.

Jack has a moment of breathless surprise before Miranda has pressed her hands to Jack's cheeks and pulled her face to hers. "Not goodbye," she murmurs desperately against her lips, the heated promise of her breath both thrilling and terrifying.

Miranda presses her lips to Jack's as though she has always known their feel, as though their warmth and their softness and their heady taste was as natural as breathing. She grips her face tightly and helplessly to her.

Jack moves instinctually. She wraps her arms around Miranda's slim form, pulling her tightly and recklessly to her, one hand sliding up her back, the other gripping her neck in a fearful and needy ache. She moves her tongue against Miranda's and is lost.

There is a moan between them and Jack smiles against Miranda's lips at the sound that rises from her. When Miranda sinks her teeth into Jack's bottom lip, sucking it into her mouth, the dark, curling sound of contentment that rasps through Jack is heady and reckless. She curls her fingers into the dark tangle of Miranda's hair, pushing further into the woman until she stumbles back, her boots treading closer to the edge.

They break apart then, feverishly, both clinging tightly to each other, both eyeing the close and moderate slope of the hill before them, panting and back-treading from the ledge.

Miranda is the first to speak, her voice a ragged mix of desire and fear. "We aren't finished yet." Her eyes are dark and fixed on the valley below, the deafening boom of Harbinger's attack shaking the hills around them.

Jack sighs, pulling slowly and reluctantly from Miranda, until it is only her hand on her waist. She hooks two fingers into the ammo-belt at Miranda's waist possessively, anchoring herself to her. "No, we're not," she intones meaningfully.

Miranda glances toward Jack. She swallows tightly and licks her swollen lips.

Jack pulls a sharp breath in and clears her throat, the need for words she doesn't quite understand bubbling up in her. "I don't love you or any bullshit like that." Her eyes fall to the fingers hooked into Miranda's belt. She exhales softly, cursing under her breath.

Miranda laughs, a half-scoff, a half-sigh. "God, I should hope not." She wipes a hand across her eyes, digging the knuckles into the socket, shaking the ash from her hair.

Jack's brow furrows, her jaw clenched as she looks to her. "I don't even know if I _like_ you."

Miranda cocks her head, her eyes soft. "Maybe when this is over, we can figure that out."

Jack opens her mouth, then promptly closes it. She blows an exasperated breath through her lips and scratches at the shaved side of her head. "This is so fucked up." She looks down the valley and finds something lighting within her. Intense and unstoppable.

Miranda reaches for Jack's free hand and holds it between them. Jack looks back to her at the motion. The thunderous boom of battle below echoes deep in their bones. Everything is broken and dying and lost around them. She has no words.

Jack sighs and shakes her head. "I'm not looking for – I mean, I don't…"

"I know," Miranda offers.

Jack narrows her eyes at the other woman. "What do you even want from me?"

Miranda opens her mouth to answer but Jack continues, scoffing, pulling her hand from Miranda's to rub at her mouth. "This could be the end of fucking everything and it was only a kiss. Only a fucking kiss, you hear me?" she hisses, her hand swiping through the air as though to signify the finality of the sentiment. She does not relinquish her hold on Miranda's belt through any of it. "Because shit," she chuckles, "Who knows if I'll ever get another one. That's it. That's all this fucking, stupid mess is. This is _not_ a promise or any bullshit like that. I don't need that kind of shit in my life." She brings a shaking hand to her forehead.

"Jack!" Miranda barks, huffing slightly in exasperation. "I don't care. Just shut up and kiss me." She swallows tightly and straightens her back as the words leave her.

Jack is still and silent before her, eyes fixed to Miranda's unblinking ones. Slowly, the wicked hint of a smirk tugs at her lips and she pulls at the hold she has on Miranda's belt, dragging her body into hers, her arm moving to wrap around Miranda and hold her flush against her. Her other hand is already sliding up Miranda's neck and into her hair when she slips her tongue into the other woman's mouth without further words.

Miranda sucks a sharp breath through her nose at Jack's sudden intrusion, but she is quickly sighing into the kiss, her own tongue pushing roughly against Jack's, her hands falling to rest softly along her shoulders. She feels Jack's needy fingers digging into her scalp and moans into her mouth, her own fingers curling against the smooth material of her armor. They break the kiss a moment later, both heated and panting, their lips a whisper's touch away.

Jack smirks against Miranda's mouth, nipping softly at her bottom lip, her arm tightening her hold around her waist so that they have never been closer.

It is everything new and strange and unexplainable.

Miranda's eyes flutter open, her mouth parting in anxious impatience to taste the woman again.

Jack pulls from her needy mouth and buries her face in Miranda's neck, exhaling heavily against her skin, her lips hot and slick and tender along the smooth column of her throat. "Demanding as ever," she smirks against her neck.

Miranda huffs, but it is tinged with the heavy breath of her desire, her hands gripping Jack's shoulders to pull her from her, just enough to lock eyes with the biotic, just enough so that the space is still warm and stirring between them, so that their chests are still pressing together. So that she can slide her hands up to Jack's cheeks and rub a thumb along her swollen lips. "I do want something from you," she whispers breathlessly, her gaze locked on the fullness of the other woman's mouth.

"Of course you do." Jack rolls her eyes, her hand in Miranda's hair slinking down to linger against the yielding softness of her throat, her fingers spreading gently over the skin where her pulse beats recklessly. Her eyes light along the spot her lips had touched moments ago.

"Don't say goodbye," Miranda murmurs heatedly between them, her brows furrowing, her words heavy and unfamiliar along her throat. "Whatever that means."

Jack flicks her gaze to Miranda's, finds the lingering trepidation in them. She feels the searing heat of her body pressed to hers, feels the steady thrum of gunfire echoing around them, feels the light dusting of soot along Miranda's skin. She feels the way her heart has not stopped raging in her chest since she first pulled Miranda to her.

Pressing her forehead against Miranda's, Jack exhales slowly against her lips. She closes her eyes and remembers what she tastes like. Ash and salt and freedom. "Okay," she breathes lowly. There is something deeper than fear in the words, something angry and forceful. Something uncompromising that lights a fierce tremble along her skin.

Miranda releases a shaky breath, her eyes fluttering closed, her thumb running tenderly over Jack's lips and then against her cheek. "Okay," she repeats, nodding slightly, her eyes sliding open once more.

Their gazes lock.

More than past, more than bitterness, more than hesitance. There is something stronger. Something that promises danger and vulnerability and tender, beautiful heartache. Promises it in all the tantalizing and freeing ways of connection. Touch. That unknowable tangle of emotion that grips at their hearts.

Maybe in the most painful and desperate of ways, but it will be together.

It will be _together_.

Jack and Miranda stand stoic, ready, immovable on the hill. They look out to the blinding, threatening light of Harbinger's attacks, to the unending barrage of soldiers flooding toward the beam. They find each other's hands, shaking and desperate and unknowing. They feel the air, heavy and ash-lined, filling their lungs like a soothing promise. They welcome the threatening quake of the earth beneath their feet. And when they look to one another, they smile.

Brilliant and shameless and alive.

They run.


End file.
